DEALING WITH KHADAFFI

Khadaffi's despotic abuse of the Libyans people must be ended. The Allies, through the United Nations, have already moved to attain that. This is not a case of “dealing with Libyans”. The Libyan majority are the people, who suffer political abuse from Khadaffi's abuse of military power. In fact, it is exactly the fact that Khadaffi's supporters are in the minority, that makes it necessary to deal with him. Khadaffi will attempt to regain a position and continue to claim to be a legitimate ruler of the majority. Khadaffi's use of his nation's military weapons against the civil Libyan population terminated his legitimacy in any government and power. If Khadaffi were to be removed quickly, perhaps by his own abdication, it would save everybody a lot of trouble, pain and war. He is inured to it, and won't.

It is not that that the situation requires dealing with per se. Each of the countries among the Allies is an expert at that. As a group the Allies are rapidly showing their organization and potential in collective expertise. One of the particulars of the situation is that in the past, people from North Africa (and one senses and undercurrent that wants worse) have occupied parts of Europe in the past, and were eventually driven out only after five hundred to a thousand years of right resistance. After Moroccans occupied the Iberian peninsula, Right was one of the few things that implacably favored the people of what is now Spain in their struggle to free themselves from their oppressors.

Removing the North Africans from Spain took centuries because the only institution that persisted in acting to eject them was the Church, which always has relatively little military power and at that time commanded little respect from the military. It is also important to know why, if it was merely a power vacuum that caused Africans to move into Spain, why they did not take over Portugal. The usual answer is that Portugal remained a monarchy. The question is not why Portugal remained stable. All of Spain would have remained stable if it could. The question is, why? African-American influence here in the Pacific northwest suggests there was some greater good regarding Portugal, either from the Africans themselves, in the Portuguese themselves, or over the entire situation. The royal position appears to be that it was the monarch itself which provided sanctuary for Portugal, and it is suggested nowadays that the United States would do well to take that into consideration. It is a point too dear to leave it dangling and yet it might be sufficient to know that there are numerous people on both sides of the Canadian border, interested in either increasing the nobility of the Constitutional Republic of the United States, or in dissolving the Canadian border. It would be incautious not to mention that suggestions of dissolving the Mexican border also exist.

Few civilized people are interested in revenge, and much prefer the win-win strategies that have proved so effective. Khadaffi's regime, however, appears to be acting in the usual predator-prey relationship between the powerful and the weak, and is deeply rooted in the primordial zero sum game. Even his quick response to say he was standing down his military action against the civilian population of Libya was only the superficial blink of an aggressor finding surprising resistance among its prey animals. Khadaffi fancies himself the lion, and the people are the wild herds of deer, antelopes and other prey.

The Khadaffi regime is conscious that North African persons once occupied Spain, and is likely to be banking on in an intention to repeat the process. After all, it's just another millennium in the African time domain. It might put special pressure on whatever groups it can find among the soldiers of the Allies, including those who have family or ancestors in Spain. When soldiers of the Allied forces go into Libya, those among them who are from Spanish and possibly from Mexican families will be facing people who held them down a long time ago. As a colonel, Khadaffi won't miss the weak points, and won't miss his own strong points either.

As in other parts of the world, the Allies are certain to be facing distinctly peculiar ancient formidable aspects of the places where they engage foe. Some are seriously mysterious, because they were even forgotten by the people in those parts and they only emerge in time of great stress. Foes of these Allies usually find themselves drawn to display their very finest, most noble and durable qualities as long as their resistance holds. Action by the Allies is process, and it calls on every soldier to do his best to make major changes in a place which contains an oppressive regime. He or she will face an enemy that might be extraordinarily stubborn in calling up every tooth and nail he can find in his home land. That oppressor will exact, to every extent possible, the deepest instincts from his people he can persuade them to yield to him.

It is important to keep the distinction between the oppressive regime which has made itself the enemy of the people, and the people who are expected to be trying to help with the Allies. It is not easy for a population to disobey their tyrant and aid those who are coming to help remove him from power. Libyans are likely to show ambiguity, hesitation, reluctance and such unwillingness to go beyond their customs that they are resistant. In this respect, problems are certain to appear in Libya which are very similar to those which appeared in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and other places. These are the brush fire wars, but they are still dangerous and costly even if, as everyone highly agrees, absolutely necessary for the free world.

This engagement is likely to distinguishes the North side of the Mediterranean from South side, and may head off even more problems in the future. It is not even in the interest of the most isolated monarch to plunge the world into another long period such as happened in Spain when the Roman legacy was put into deep freeze and darkness until Europe was conquered, colonized, settled and civilized. Modern interests are based on very different premises than existed in medieval times and earlier.

Way back then, from prehistoric antiquity to, say, the construction of the Pyramids, or to make the story shorted, the Parthenon, and more toward brief, Rome's collapse, all of that which led and drove human beings was dominated by superstition, dreams, imaginary and speculative assumptions about the real or actual nature of the World, including the Sun, Moon and stars, comets and meteors and space, night and day. Concocted were myths and stories about monsters, heroes, dragons, gardens, heavens, angels, gods, space aliens and moon creatures, and eventually human heroes flying through the skies. So what does this have to do with liberating the people of Libya from a tyrannical colonel?

Well, the long struggle paid off, and civilized nations around the world were happy to help in the final attainment of the Moon. (An obligatory boast is always necessary here-that only the United States could have done it. Yet it would have been an insult to civilization itself if it was only the United States that found it valuable triumph and more than ego's goal. Many other nations contributed valuable knowledge to the people of the United States, too.)

The important result was a flat ending, prosaic descriptions of places with dirt and rocks, planets with lots of gas, including the hot Sun, only two large places a human being can stand or walk on and neither of those has breathable air or potable water. To be exposed in ordinary clothing on any planet or object in the solar system other than Earth is instant death. By the merciful, there are no space aliens, monsters, enemies or threats except for the occasional falling rocks-the asteroids and even those are becoming scarce and the events of their fall are rare. That's the difference.

Now, whenever there is enough peace to consider the future say two generations ahead – any more than about forty years in the future swiftly becomes incalculable eons, millions of years and much, much more. Time eternal stretches before human development now. That is one of the reason the economic system seems to be in malaise when it should be happily optimistic. However, we are mired in our on constructions and in traditions inherited from our own tribal villages, cities, empires, kingdoms, dynasties, and other institutions. Successful space flight led many to believe they are all perfect. Space flight assures us they were not all failures. Yet the cost of war during the final stages (decades to centuries, depending on how much patience one has in collecting statistics) the cost in lives lost in combat, atrocities, unnecessary plagues, sheer mistakes and disasters must be accounted in some measure an estimate of the difference.

Success was attained in reaching the Moon and exploring the planets. Both total and irrecoverable failure were averted in the five or ten thousand years of struggle by that event. Yet the success was not without great cost, and in times of no such overwhelming goal, it was cost that would have been regarded as unacceptable. Determining the nature of the Sun and Moon, the planets and the void was at the cost of hundreds of millions of human lives and uncounted losses in wildlife, domesticated animals, and property. If we regard this as seriously comprehensible, it becomes a larger and longer range concept of history, than merely depending on each our own nation's past and assuming the whole is incomprehensible.

The Earth's people thus attained the essential facts about the Sun and Moon and the rest of the solar system; assessed the distances and lack of evidence of any immediate threats from the distant stars; discovered that apart from Earth, no habitable places exist in the Solar System, it becomes the world to view its its broad and extensive future with a finer and more delicate resolve and thus gauge energy more carefully. This is already happening through the use of color standards in national, state and other flags, as well as in technology in which energy is finely metered and calibrated. In that sense, it is a time to be optimistic. Even in processing the Libyan situation. The military coordination of the Allies shows signs of consummate expertise, so that it will even more effectively hit the targets it must hit, and spare the innocent people. It won't be perfect, and war never is, but it will be a war better waged. The contrasts are becoming less severe, and the gradients more gentle.

Already much of what is vital to treating the planet and life on it with a more careful hand exists and is in use every day. The weird thing is that people don't want to talk about that or ever hear it or be conscious of it. Perhaps they imagine somehow the signs of peace will fail if anybody knows, while on the other hand, millions of people have worked very much to bring these things into existence.

In the eventuality, Earth will be again cultivated molecule by molecule, only with greater understanding of its nature. Instead of in twenty ton sandstone blocks.